The Portrait (13 page)

WHEN I MAKE all these sniffy remarks about the French, I do not mean to denigrate them, you know. Fine to be French; it is the
faux-français
that revolt me. Paris was a good time, my liberation. Not as a painter, as I learned next to nothing there and had to spend years getting rid of what I did absorb. But as a man, it was crucial. I went there nervous, shy, uncomfortable, and came back—myself. In all my ostentatious glory, swaggering around the London stage proclaiming myself. I became a character, what the artist should be. It was only a stage show, but worked well enough as that. Some hated me, and thought me fraud or fool, some found me entertaining. But everybody noticed me; and that is the key to success in the world these days. Far more important than actually being good. To impose yourself, to take the public by the scruff of the neck and give it a good shaking; to scream in its provincial little ear that
I am a genius.
And if you scream loud enough and long enough, it believes you. Establish that, and in the public mind a good painting becomes a masterpiece, a failure becomes a bold experiment. I saw that in Paris, and learned how to shout.

You watched my transfiguration and guided it; I can remember how it felt, when the penny dropped. It was in a bar, not far from the atelier, and there was a group of us talking. A long day’s work, our eyes still tired from strain, the smell of paint and turpentine hanging over us. Each of us marked by our filthy, blackened fingernails, multicoloured hands. The exuberance of noisy conversation after a hard day, for we were serious, you know. We worked hard eight, ten, sometimes twelve hours a day in summer, learning our craft and trying to equip ourselves for the battles to come, when we had to put it into practise. I can’t remember who was there; Rothenstein for one, I imagine, prim and proper as he always was, making his pursed and always slightly flattening comments, taking the joy out of the occasion by always insisting on thinking about what he said. McAvoy, perhaps, with his disconcerting habit of interjecting a comment that had nothing to do with what we were talking about. Evelyn was certainly not there; she packed her bags at the end of the day and went home. She was always a thing apart, never one of a group. We were drinking and I could not take my drink; my puritan blood was not used to it. A little went a long way, and after two glasses I was roaring drunk while everyone else was still stone cold sober. My tongue loosened, and I said something perfectly absurd; the sort of thing that my normal self would never have dared think, let alone say.

I can’t remember what it was, but I remember the formula: take any major artist and stress a weakness, real or imagined. Build yourself up by diminishing others greater than yourself. The critic’s trick. So what was it? Manet would be a great artist if only he could control his line. Rembrandt’s lack of structure precludes him from being considered a true genius. Raphael’s weakness was that he lacked a Venetian’s sense of colour. Some nonsense like that. And to my surprise I found people nodding, not daring to make the obvious response that I was talking rubbish. Not because they agreed with me, either; but because I had spoken with such vehemence. I was allowed to say drivel, even encouraged to do so. I had come into my birthright.

I felt ashamed of myself, and even more ashamed of those who didn’t stop me, but it was a touch of power, and out of that moment grew the artist I became. I learned to impose myself, force myself on other people, bully them with my presence and my convictions and, in so doing, convince myself as well. I became a boor and found that people flocked to me, wanting me to do violence to them or, if not that, to be around while I assaulted others.

Except for prissy little Evelyn, of course, who missed my artistic birth in the bar. I took her out one evening, in Paris. She was lonely, and I decided she was ripe for assault. I would attack, overwhelm and achieve a grand victory over her. What was she, after all? I wanted to try out my new persona on an easy target, and she seemed perfect for it. I was even prepared to spend money, although getting others to spend it for me soon became a part of my reputation. It is strange how others feel in your debt if they pay for you in restaurants.

It wasn’t high elegance, though, that evening. We went to a
bouillon
which I liked because it was the Paris of the people, the sort of place where not even English painters could be found. No tablecloths, waiters even rougher than the clientele, mainly used by people without any means of cooking themselves who ate
en pension
there, keeping their knives in their own wooden box by the entrance. I frequented many of them, but my favourite was down by Bercy, where you could sit next to the wine men and hear the accents of Burgundy and Bordeaux. The whole place stank of rancid wine and sweat from their clothes, but the food wasn’t bad and the wine was better than you get in many a fine restaurant. No women there at all, ever: this was a place for men to eat.

That was part of my plan, of course, the first stage in my scheme to intimidate. Evelyn, I decided, would be so scared of being in such a place that she would look to me, would shrink against me in that hostile, violent place. I would become her protector, and once that was established, all else would be easy.

It started well, because she dressed in her best for the occasion. Not elegantly, of course, she had no good clothes in that sense. Plain, comfortable garb, almost masculine in style which she rescued from ugliness with a touch of colour or detail—she somehow managed to make an artificial flower in her hair seem charming, a cheap necklace seem stylish. She had a way of putting things together on her body which suggested a sensuality which was the more intriguing for being so carefully hidden. Something she wanted to advertise but was afraid of at the same time. It was what made her so proper and seemingly so mousy, until you got to know her and realised she was nothing of the sort.

I had not reckoned, of course, on her ability to call on the inherent sense of superiority of the middle-class English female to protect her in hostile territory. She comes from the class of women who made the empire, who can sail through the much more unfriendly waters of a charity bazaar or Park Lane tea party and emerge unscathed. Half a hundred burly French drunks are as nothing to such people; in fact, she blossomed under the challenge. All her natural shyness vanished as she settled into a role she understood all too well. She sat down at her table, and straightaway asked the man next to her—an enormous, scowling Parisian who could have crushed her in one giant paw—if he would be so kind as to stop smoking.

A silence fell. Someone sniggered, but stopped dead when she fixed him with a steely glance and slightly raised eyebrow. The cigarette was dropped to the floor and crushed out with the heel of a huge boot. The conversation resumed once more and, now that Evelyn had established herself as the hostess of our little table, she held court for the rest of the evening, genteelly receiving compliments and, it seemed, quite enjoying herself. Every five minutes, a fresh glass of wine would be presented to us by our new friends, then the cognac merchants weighed in and a tide of brandy rolled over us, propelled by the irresistible force of amiable sentiment. Her French was much better than mine; I became her companion, tolerated because I was with her, not the other way round.

The end was inevitable; Evelyn, I discovered, could drink even a stevedore under the table. She came from a long line of heavy drinkers and it seemed to have no effect on her. You remember what it did to me. My plans were in disarray; I was humiliated, exposed as a fraud—and I knew that she saw, and understood, everything. She all but had to carry me out, and when, in my befuddled state, I hurled myself on her, she sidestepped daintily and I fell, heavily, onto the ground. It took me some time to get up again, and when I rolled over I saw her sitting on a stone wall looking at me as though I was a six-year-old who’d just dropped some chocolate on the Wilton.

Somehow or other she got me back to my lodgings and left me propped up at the door; during the whole evening we’d barely said a word to each other. She’d talked to the warehousemen while I’d slowly descended into a black, drunken depression.

“Listen, Henry MacAlpine,” she said as she left me. “You cannot take your drink very well. You really shouldn’t try; it doesn’t bring out the best in you.” Then she patted me affectionately on the shoulder and walked off.

And that was the end of the adventure. You laugh; yes. I laugh myself now, although at the time I found it anything but funny. You, no doubt, would never have allowed such a thing to happen to you. But then you don’t know anything at all about humiliation. You don’t know what it is to have your weaknesses and stupidities dragged out for public view, to be treated gently even though you deserve mockery. There I have the advantage of you; it is something we lowland Scots specialise in. We are ready to be humiliated, almost invite it, and welcome it with relief when it comes. It proves that God is watching us, that daily His judgement continues.

It didn’t matter that Evelyn was the only person ever to do that to me. Somebody existed in the world who could see through me, and stopped me from believing in my new self totally. As long as I remembered that, I knew that Henry MacAlpine, artist, was nothing more than a piece of fakery, a theatrical production designed merely to sell second-rate pictures to a foolish public.

What I mean to say here is that I had very good reason to hate Evelyn. Had I done so I could have stood before the Lord (in due course) with my hand on my heart and pleaded self-justification. Twice she wounded me in my
amour propre
; she humiliated me, pitied me and rejected me, and on all occasions did it with kindness. Wars have started for less reason than that.

She never did anything of the sort to you. With you she was always distant but polite, too withdrawn and too inexperienced in the ways of the world even to deserve much attention from you.

So why was it that you hated her, and I did not? That is a mystery, is it not?

LOOKING BACK from my vantage point by the wide Atlantic, I can see that Evelyn had irritated you from the moment you first cast eyes on her at Julien’s. There was something about her determination, her resolution, that annoyed you. Already she was going her own way, carefully learning what she wanted to learn, not what everyone else was doing. She decided to have a go at lithography, even though it was the lowest of all art forms. Little better than being a grubby printer turning out stock catalogues for department stores, so you thought. You didn’t realise then that the next generation of French painters—your generation, the ones who have made your name for you—would discover it as well, and use it to good effect. Nor did she, of course; she was utterly indifferent to any such information. She merely became fascinated by the possibilities of drawing straight onto a piece of limestone, and wanted to see what could be done with it.

Being so direct, she took herself off, went to one of those printers you so despised, and sat at his feet for several months as though he had been Rubens himself. He knew things she wanted to learn, and her sense of dignity was so great she felt it no shame to go to mere artisans for instruction. And she learned, by God, better than any of us. Did you respect her the more for it? Of course not. Did I? No; I followed your lead, and forgot how much such people can know, and how much they can teach. I had been one myself, after all; the same people had taught me, too, and taught me well. And in my effort to put all my past behind me, to forget the workshop in Glasgow, I scorned her as much as you did.

Or was it the lack of gentility and decorum, to think of her with her hands covered in ink, straining to pull the heavy roller over the stone? Shouldn’t such people be in the drawing room? Should such dainty little muscles be used only for pouring tea? Shouldn’t that look of satisfaction come only from hearing a husband make some witty remark? Of course they should! The woman was an aberration, a freak, to desire such things and take pleasure in them. But she did so desire them, and the pleasure was real.

I remember once she disappeared for a few days; I think maybe I was the only one who noticed; this was a few months after my humiliation at the
bouillon
in Bercy. Eventually, I went round to her lodgings and persuaded the ogre who owned them to let me go up and see her. She was ill with a flu, and had a terrible bronchitic cough; I thought when I heard her she might be consumptive. But no; it was just a cough, but a bad one, poor dear, made worse by having had no attention at all for several days. She was in a mess, but too proud to ask for help. Perhaps she thought no-one liked her, and didn’t want an appeal for help ignored. Foolish of her; she was liked more than she realised. She made people nervous, of course, but there were some able to conquer such emotions. I can’t say that illness made her more attractive; with some, the onset of frailty and vulnerability makes you want to sweep them up in your arms, cosset them and protect them. Many a woman has snared a husband with a well-timed burst of fainting. Not Evelyn. Weakness made her almost repulsive; her skin turned sallow rather than pale, and she lay curled up like some sort of insect. Take away the movement and she had no natural grace; she was awkward, ungainly and uncoordinated unless she was holding a brush or pencil. It seemed the only thing that could bring her alive.